Birds and All Nature, Vol. VI, No. 3, October 1899. Various
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tints, are slowly changing to somber brown above, and black shadows are creeping over them below; and now it is a dark portal to a region of gloom – the gateway through which we are to enter on our voyage of exploration to-morrow."
The 9th of June brought disaster to a boat containing three of the men, who were carried down the rapids, but all were rescued.
They pass the mouths of the Uintah and the White Rivers, with constantly changing scenes, making a tortuous journey through many dangerous rapids, much of the time between high, perpendicular walls.
On the 15th they pass around a great bend, five miles in length, and come back to a point one-quarter of a mile from where they started. Then they sweep around another great bend to the left, making a circuit of nine miles, and come back to one-third of a mile from where the bend started. The figure 8 properly describes the fourteen miles' journey. July 17 they arrive at the junction of the Grand and Green rivers, having traversed about eight hundred and four miles.
On the morning of July 19, the Major and a companion start to climb the left wall below the junction of the Grand and Green Rivers. They reach the summit of the rocks. The view is thus described: "And what a world of grandeur is spread before us! Below, us is the cañon, through which the Colorado runs. We can trace its course for miles, as at points we catch glimpses of the river. From the northwest comes the Green, in a narrow, winding gorge. From the northeast comes the Grand, through a cañon that seems bottomless, from where we stand. Away to the west are lines of cliff and ledges of rock – not such ledges as you may have seen, where the quarry-man splits his blocks, but ledges from which the gods might quarry mountains, that, rolled on the plain below, would stand a lofty range; and not such cliffs as you may have seen, where the swallow builds his nest, but cliffs where the soaring eagle is lost to view ere he reaches the summit. Between us and the distant cliffs are the strangely carved and pinnacled rocks of the Toom pin wu-near Tu-weap. On the summit of the opposite wall of the cañon are rock forms that we do not understand. Away to the east a group of eruptive mountains are seen – the Sierra La Sal. Their slopes are covered with pines, and deep gulches are flanked with great crags, and snow fields are seen near the summits. So the mountains are in uniform – green, gray, and silver. Wherever we look there is but a wilderness of rocks; deep gorges, where the rivers are lost below cliffs and towers and pinnacles; and ten thousand strangely carved forms in every direction, and beyond them mountains blending with the clouds."
"Traveling as fast as I can run, I soon reach the foot of the stream, for the rain did not reach the lower end of the cañon, and the water is running down a bed of dry sand; and, although it comes in waves several feet high and fifteen or twenty feet in width, the sands soak it up, and it is lost. But wave follows wave, and rolls along, and is swallowed up; and still the floods come on from above. I find that I can travel faster than the stream; so I hasten to camp and tell the men there is a river coming down the cañon."
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